Make: Volume 97: Tech Craft

Where Traditional Craft Meets Modern Tech 🛠️

Make: Volume 97: Tech Craft is the Summer 2026 issue of Make: magazine—a quarterly publication for people who like to build, tinker, sew, code, and experiment. This 132-page issue celebrates the growing conversation between handcraft traditions and digital fabrication, asking what happens when old techniques meet new tools. It also marks the 20th anniversary of Make:’s companion magazine, Craft:.

23 Projects for Hands and Minds 🧵💡

Across its pages you’ll find step-by-step builds and features that range from a glowing embroidered bargello bag to a layerless 3D printer. The issue brings together electronics, textiles, wood, clay, code, and cardboard in ways that feel surprising but practical.

• Digital ceramics: Kenny Sing shows how 3D printing, CNC vinyl cutting, and surface mapping can push clay into new aesthetic territory.
• Wearable electronics: Kate Hartman discusses teaching embodied circuits, while a bargello embroidery project uses the Pixelblaze LED controller to create a light-up bag—no programming required.
• Woodworking: Learn yakisugi, the Japanese technique of charring wood for a deep, dark finish.
• Inflatables and cosplay: Get top tips for designing and sewing your own custom inflatable character.
• Knife making: Discover the rewards of forging an heirloom blade.
• Synth hacking: Turn a cheap cassette player into a unique analog loop synthesizer.
• 3D printing: Build OpenCAL, described as the world’s first layerless, all-at-once 3D printer.
• Game interaction: Make a fuzzy cat sensor that works with the Unity game engine.
• Plus: lenticular moving images, an LED flower jean jacket, a mechanical moiré sculpture, an etching press build, Adobe’s toy inventor notebook, xTool’s new craft machines, and a student-built ENIAC replica.

Stories from the Maker World

The issue also goes behind the scenes with The Secret Makers of Pixar, a look at how the studio’s storytellers keep tinkering after hours. You’ll also step inside Walter Martinez Marconi’s Star Wars-filled Los Angeles workspace, and read Peter Kaminski’s comparison of woodworking tools and AI knowledge tools—an essay that asks how the craft moves upstream when our tools learn to talk to each other.

Who Will Enjoy This Issue?

If you already move between a soldering iron and a sewing machine, this issue will feel like a conversation with fellow makers. If you’re newer to making, the projects offer a welcoming mix of beginner-friendly ideas and ambitious builds. Teachers, workshop leaders, and anyone curious about digital fabrication will find plenty to borrow, adapt, and share.

Making and Crafting, Together Again

Make: Volume 97 treats craft and technology as two sides of the same coin. The result is a magazine that respects tradition while embracing what new machines and materials make possible. Whether you read it for the projects, the profiles, or the ideas, it’s an invitation to pick up a tool—any tool—and see where it takes you.